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Friday, April 3, 2009

But I don't smoke pot, and I don't like it. Not only that, I don't like what it does to people, including people I know, and especially people I used to know, before they they fatally OD'd; and I worry that my sons will come under the influence of bad people who smoke pot, snort coke, and God knows what else; and my boys will be too inexperienced in the ways of the drug culture to know that what they're being turned on to could kill them. It's not just about "smoking pot." It's about the entire wasting culture that it promotes, especially among the young and aimless, who haven't yet figured out how much work it takes to be successful in life. And my kids, and many other millions of good kids, in good family homes across this country, certainly don't know that pot is indeed a gateway to harder drugs, mainline drugs, and thus to a harder life of crime, dependency, and lost promise. But check out Wilkinson, in any case:

Marijuana is neither evil nor dangerous. Scientists have proven its medical uses. It has spared millions from anguish. But the casual pleasure marijuana has delivered is orders of magnitude greater than the pain it has assuaged, and pleasure matters too. That’s probably why Barack Obama smoked up the second and third times: because he liked it. That’s why tens of millions of Americans regularly take a puff, despite the misconceived laws meant to save us from our own wickedness.

The Atlantic Monthly’s Andrew Sullivan has been documenting on his blog the stories of typical, productive Americans—kids’ football coaches, secretaries of the PTA—who smoke marijuana because they like to smoke marijuana, but who understandably fear emerging fully from the “cannabis closet.” This is a profoundly necessary idea. If we’re to begin to roll back our stupid and deadly drug war, the stigma of responsible drug use has got to end, and marijuana is the best place to start. The super-savvy Barack Obama managed to turn a buck by coming out of the cannabis (and cocaine) closet in a bestselling memoir. That’s progress. But his admission came with the politicians’ caveat of regret. We’ll make real progress when solid, upstanding folk come out of the cannabis closet, heads held high.

So here we go. My name is Will Wilkinson. I smoke marijuana, and I like it.

It seems to me, that if someone were going to make a rationalist case for marijuana legalization, the last person they'd cite as an authority is the uber-hypocrite Andrew Sullivan.

LBCC student Corrie Vibbert was arrested on several charges, including drug possession, Monday, March 16 after a parking violation led to the more severe charges, police said.

Vibbert, who has attended LBCC since 2006, parked his black BMW between two handicapped spots in a loading zone, which caused special service officer Kent Smith to check the car for the appropriate parking passes.

Lt. Julie Prior of the LBPD said Smith walked up to the vehicle and saw a drug-related pipe on the center console. Vibbert quickly attempted to hide it, according to reports.

Smith immediately asked to search the vehicle and the suspect consented. Smith recovered a bag of marijuana, hash, mushrooms, a bong and a pipe.

The drugs were valued at more than $7,160. Vibbert was taken into custody shortly after.

"He was arrested on possession and intent to sell and transport," Prior said.

"He violated three sections of the health and safety code. Since I've been here, I've never come across a student having drugs of this quantity," said Prior, who started at LBCC in 2005.

Vibbert has been charged with unauthorized possession, transportation, sale and furnishing of controlled substances.

If convicted, Vibbert could face imprisonment by the state and will pay a fine for misdemeanor crimes.

Do not tell me, Will Wilkinson, that "Marijuana is neither evil nor dangerous." Fancy-talking libertarians like you have the luxury of expounding on the "failed" war on drugs while kicking back in cozy offices at the Cato Intstitute, or some other free-market think tank. I mean, look at this blather: "the stigma of responsible drug use has got to end." Hey, man, can I borrow your Visine?

In any case, no doubt my former student Corrie Vibbert was on his way to deliver some of da kine to "kids’ football coaches, secretaries of the PTA."

39
comments:

Dr.D,My experience is anecdotal for sure, but it is also experiential. I have seen the effects of drug use. The myth of the harmless drug marijuana is alive and well.

I have encountered many times the marijuana user whose life becomes a constant search for the drug. Users of cocaine, heroin, meth etc. almost invariably began using marijuana. This type of thinking is dangerous.

Libertarians are about as bad as liberals in that they espouse giving up as a way to make life better for everyone. Do drugs? As long as it doesn't hurt anyone else. Amsterdam worked out just fine didn't it?

If we legalize drugs I have a question. The debilitating effects of drugs don't go away because they're legal. If we legalize them whose on the hook for the medical costs as the users suffer and die?

One more tax burden for the American people. Isn't the well getting a little dry?

"The debilitating effects of drugs don't go away because they're legal. If we legalize them whose on the hook for the medical costs as the users suffer and die?" --Law and Order Teacher

We are on the hook for treating the medical costs of users whether drugs are legal or illegal.

It's the WAR on drugs that I want to end, and if legalizing them will do that, then it is worth it.

We are also on the hook for millions (billions?) spent fighting an unwinnable war. It truly is a quagmire and ENCOURAGES criminal behavior.

(ohmy, I've resorted to using ALL CAPS. Please understand that it's merely because I'm too lazy to use HTML.)

Imagine how much money would be available for treatment if we weren't funding the DEA and local swat teams.

I read somewhere* that 10% of the population was going to be addicted to drugs whether they were illegal or not. If we can't change that statistic (if it's correct) with making something illegal, why not legalize, recognize, and treat those at risk of becoming addicted?

I have visited a culture where a very psychotropic drug is legal, used by a majority of the population, and has rendered the country a virtual hotbed of crime, ethnic hatred, and communal warfare.

I have been to Yemen around eight times, several for a week or more, and four times as a U.S. government official [based in the US Embassy in Saudi Arabia.]

Yemen, which used to produce the best coffee in the world, Mocha, which was produced around and exported from the port of Mocha, has reverted to the hypercaffeinatiing psychotropic drug, qat. The effects of this drug, which I was given a chance to try, are enervating and about the same as methamphetamines, leading to an almost hallucinatory grandiosity and then descending to a violence-prone "plateau" where deadly violence leading to death occurs on a daily basis and is not even regarded as unusual.

I have been to Mocha, asked for a cup of coffee, and was told to wait for the smugglers from Ethiopia about fifty miles away across the Bab Al Mandeb [Door of the Devil] who would bring java among their deliveries. My taxi driver was waiting for the smugglers anyway, since he would transport about twenty cases of illegal booze back the capital in Sana and gain a thousand dollars plus my cab fare. [I was with two German diplomats who were very disgusted with the whole episode.]

Fantasists like Donna B can write adolescent farcical phrases like: "Imagine how much money would be available for treatment if we weren't funding the DEA and local swat teams." without realizing that Yemen is an example of a country where there is no law and order whatsoever except various ineffectual interior police who ask to be bribed when they catch an offender. The unintended consequences of legalizing marijuana in an advanced industrial culture are far worse than the nasty situation we are in now with it's being the "gateway drug" to the coke, smack, meth, crack, and other-illegal-substance universe that kills young people and destroys their lives.

Ignorant untravelled parochials on the left should spend a week or month in Sana and wear kevlar because a couple hours after qat goes on sale at noon, the hot lead is flying and there are no "swat" teams or DEA around to even mitigate the daily catastrophe 24/7/365.

Get out of your cocoon, Donna B, and use your lyin' eyes to see what's goin' on....

Donna B.,Really? We are on the hook for illegal drug abuse? I don't know about your benefits at work, but mine don't cover this type of stuff. Even though the government is trying to declare drug abuse a disease, this isn't covered.

If you say you have the flu or you have a cold that's one thing. But saying "I can't come to work because I didn't get my shot of heroin" isn't on the list so far.

If you begin to miss too many days of work, someone is going to be checking on you. In private business that check comes quicker. In government it takes a little longer.

Let's see, we can have "bad needle days" or "I got a headache from snorting too fast" or "I have meth rage days" or "I got hepatitis from sharing a needle days."

Drugs have caused a lot of problems in my extended family. I will not even begin to go into the problems - and tragedies - they have caused for my students and their families. I buried another former student (and player : I coached him) just last year. He died from using the particularly nasty type of heroin that's been killing addicts in these parts for about three years now. It's cut with some kind of (additional) poison.

He was 20.

No one is ever going to be able to convince me that it's a good idea to legalize yet another mind-altering, gateway drug.

LOL! Seriously, I LOLed. I'm sorry some of your friends died, but THEY DID NOT OD ON POT. YOU CANNOT OD ON POT. This is a fact that most people are already aware of. You could die of smoke inhalation if locked in a closet being pumped full of pot smoke, but that's a little different.

I don't do pot (tried, don't like it) and am not in favor of legalizing it.

But I believe that this kind of blog simply undermines the fight against drug, the message that we try to get across.

To argue that one can OD on pot or that if you start smoking pot, you become a drug addict that will end up using hard drugs undermines the fight against drug because it doesn't reflect reality and people's experience.

When kids try pot (and let's face it, most will try it once, that's part of being a teen, of testing authority, where the limits are) they realize that pot has a mild effect. And the experience of most people is that you can smoke a bit over the weekend, and you don't get hooked in a physical sense and the decision to take something harder is a totally independent decision (it is not because you smoke pot that you physically will need to take something harder).

So the problem I have with this kind of message that want to scare people away from pot but don't reflect reality is that, by doing so, we undermine the message about the other, harder, drugs that that are a real threat to one's health. When a kid realizes that what he had been told about pot is lot of bull, he may as well discard what he has been told (correctly) about harder drugs.

Now, I understand fully that as a parent, one is scared that one's kid could go down the wrong way, but I believe that in the end that will be avoided by speaking the truth rather than by trying to create some bogeyman.

You are sitting in a world that legalizes cigarettes (nothing is more addictive) and alcohol both of which kill more people than drugs do in a year and yet you want to fight a rear guard battle agains illegal drugs.

I am against drugs and alcohol and have been cigarette free for six months.

The war on drugs is lost and that is a fact.

Rather than attempt your cheap trick of bringing up your kids in an effort to attempt a smack down, why not attempt a debate of what causes our society to exert so much effort to behavior that creates a destructive tendency and include cigarettes and alcohol...

Probably because that would not get you as much traffic that turns into money for all your little ads.

Pot breaks down the function of several organs and does kill people. This is over and above not having full control of your faculties and winding up killing yourself and others.Always amazed at the commenters like TAO who for the life of them could not carry on a reasoned conversation if they tried. Donna B. just falls into the trap of a specious cost-benefit analysis that wants to exclude the human costs.Anyone who has raised teenagers knows, I have experience here, that primary and secondary peer pressure can and does undermine parental teaching. As young people age a parent can only hope that all the teaching and training they have attempted to give is taken to heart. Parents only have a small amount of time each day because a certain number of hours are spent sleeping, a significant number of hours are spent in school and with their friends and that tends to leave only a few hours unless you want to make a prisoner of your own children. They have to experience life in order to grow into fully functioning adults.I find that most of the idiots that want to blame parents, and some parents deserve it, have never raised children and many will not because they are not into responsibility.

Stop trying to change the subject or try to create an equivalence. Alcohol and cigarettes almost never lead to the use of other drugs. If they have anything in common it is that they appeal to the addictive personality.I have a friend that I used to perform with who has an addictive personality. There was nothing that you could smoke, drink or otherwise ingest into your body that he did not do. It took me a while to convince him that getting high on music and trumpet performance was the real drug of choice. He now owns his own home, has money to spend and really enjoys his life and a lot less likely to kill himself or others. Still smoke cigarettes, but that does not impair his judgment and he is a far better human being.

I have seen enough of the damages of drugs and alcohol. I personally believe that alcohol does impair judgement, does damage lives, and does lead to the consumption of more and more alcohol.

I know lots of people who smoke weed on a regular basis and have for years and their judgement is no more impaired than an alcoholics.

Addictive personalities will find drugs and or something to satisfy their addiction...regardless of what you do so rather than spending time and effort fighting a war that we cannot win and are losing then lets go to the base of the problem..

Look at Donald and his addiction to slaming people, badmouthing people, and ranting and raving as he does...

There is a correlation between pot and hard drugs (in the sense that you get pot before you get hard drugs), but there is no causality.

99 percent of those taking pot do not graduate to heroin or similar stuff.

In fact, there is a similar correlation between alcohol and hard drugs than pot and hard drugs (the very vast majority of those ending up on heroine passed through the alcohol stage as the passed through the pot statge). But here again there is no causality.

That does not mean that we should legalize pot (as its use represents a taboo that youth can break without taking too much risk, and if it were legalized the taboo would be another, harder drug) but we should not take it for what it is not. Because this is simply counterproductive.

I see, TAO; because cigarettes and alcohol are legal yet bad for you we have to legalize all other drugs.

That is a ridiculous argument. It is an argument for no standards of all. It is an argument for giving up, for abandoning the fight. Correct me if I am wrong, Donald, but I think it's a form of nihilism.

I'm not sure how the anecdote about your hop-head student relates to the larger point of "marijuana is bad." His crime wasn't the use of the drug, it was transporting it across national borders. I have a hunch that in Wilkinson's "fancy libertarian" utopia, this sort of importation would be unnecessary.

Also, thank you @Anonymous for pointing out the distinction between correlation and causality re: pot--->heroin. I think this argument went out with the 1950's "juvenile delinquent" film subgenre.

I don't think I made the argument that marijuana and "hard" drug use share causality. The gateway simply means what it says. Once you enter the culture, you are much more susceptible to continuing on the path. And yes cigarettes and alcohol are also gateway drugs. That would be a correlation.

I can only tell you my experience of 26 years as a cop. I saw what I saw. That's anecdotal. Common sense would tell you if you stay away from the drug culture when you're young, you have a pretty good chance of remaining out of it as you age.

In my rural, relatively poor county, good jobs were hard to come by even when times were good. Now, they're a lot tougher to find.

So, when a company was accepting applications for personnel to staff a new store, they had plenty of applicants. They decided to hire thirty people, including the wife of a friend of mine. Everything was going well, and these people, who either had near-minimum wage jobs, or none at all, were going to be hired.

Then they handed them the final paperwork, including the drug test form. Fifteen of them simply returned the forms to the desk and walked out. Decent jobs, for people without too many skills, gone, up in smoke.

I did not propose a pure cost/benefit analysis in they way some are misinterpreting it.

This thread seems to rife with strawman arguments with little effort to address the actual argument I made.

So, I'll try to lay it out more carefully:

1. We are, as a society, "on the hook" for the medical costs of illegal drug use. That does not say that insurance plans everywhere cover it, but most do -- check the mental health coverage you might have.

For those without private insurance, society also pays for treatment. Medicaid, for example. The bums with nothing that the police bring to the ER, the children of drug abusers who don't get proper medical care in childhood needing more later on... and I'm sure there are other ways.

We ARE on the hook. ------

2. I propose ending the war on drugs because I think it is a waste of money and a cause of violence. I did not propose a lack of spending on fighting the use of drugs. In fact, I proposed a transfer of spending from "fighting" to treatment.

3. Black markets are, by definition, not regulated by any government. Legalization and/or decriminalization allows for regulation. Nowhere did I say it would end addiction, but it could go a long way toward reducing ODs and deaths from impurities, etc.

--------

4. A significant number of drug-abusers are mentally ill, and I include alcoholics in this category. More treatment $$$ and research into how better to treat the underlying mental illness will go a long way toward preventing some of the worst outcomes of drug abuse.

If these people can be treated with medically controlled doses of whatever drug eases the symptoms of their mental illness, it's quite possible that we'll see fewer homeless and less crime.

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I am saddened that because I disagree, I am subject to unearned labels, rather than rational responses.

I don't for one moment put unflattering labels on people with whom I disagree. Your arguments are well thought out, but I disagree.

I fail to see how legalizing drugs will change anything. Allowing drug addicts to be drug addicts on our dime will eat up any money that you propose to save from legalization.

A new government agency is on the horizon. The Department of Narcotics would be a governmental leviathan. Once the government gets into the drug business it will subjected to all the same problems that the FDA is. All the drug users become wards of the state.

Drug purity, needles, medical personnel to administer the drugs, clinic space to administer the drugs, the costs go on and on.

If you think the $$ is a problem now just wait until the government gets ahold of it.

Try this one. A drug user alledges that the government gave him an impure drug injection and now he is infected with AIDS. Lot of money there.

Law and Order Teacher -- you were not the one putting labels on people. My apologies for making it seem like it, because I was responding to some of the arguments you made.

Now, I'll do so again!

"I fail to see how legalizing drugs will change anything. Allowing drug addicts to be drug addicts on our dime will eat up any money that you propose to save from legalization."

Things would hopefully change through regulation which is impossible in a black market situation. There's no proof, of course, but we haven't tried it yet.

"A new government agency is on the horizon. The Department of Narcotics would be a governmental leviathan. Once the government gets into the drug business it will subjected to all the same problems that the FDA is. All the drug users become wards of the state."

That's overstating it a bit isn't it? Aren't all the users in prison now wards of the state? I would hope my proposal would result in the opposite. While getting treatment, they would have the chance to be more productive citizens.

"Drug purity, needles, medical personnel to administer the drugs, clinic space to administer the drugs, the costs go on and on."

You are assuming a scenario that I am not. For one, I see little reason in legalizing heroin. Methadone clinics already exist, and legalization does not mean free.

"If you think the $$ is a problem now just wait until the government gets ahold of it."

LOL, we agree on government efficiency, at least! However, I don't see it as a government run program. If the product is legal, private sources will sell it, though they will be regulated.

"Try this one. A drug user alledges that the government gave him an impure drug injection and now he is infected with AIDS. Lot of money there."

Again, you are imagining a scenario that would not happen because the druggie, if injectable drugs were legalized (not necessarily in my plan) that everything would be government provided. He'd be buying his needles from Walgreens.

This is what I meant about strawman arguments -- you are arguing against things I'm not proposing.

DB,I don't have a lot of time,it's late, but I thought your arguments deserved some reply.

My major question to you is, if drugs are legalized and regulated, who will do the regulating? I don't think a mechanism exists to do the massive job of regulation outside the government.

There isn't a group in the private sector that is capable of that scale of regulation.

I don't think the Department of Narcotics is too far fetched. Again give me a scenario for some group to regulate the distribution of drugs to those who need them.

If you don't envision the legalization of heroin etc., how are you going to stop that. And if you draw the line at "hard" drugs are you going to makes laws against it. If so, you are back where you started. Enforcement against drug abusers.

In short, you are proposing a situation that is untenable. It's legal to smoke dope, but once you cross the line, into the justice system you go.

I think your approach puts you in the situation of trying to plug too many leaks, with too few fingers.

I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

The original article here lacked any substantial evidence against Wilkinson's claim. I'm sorry, but I have yet to hear one convincing argument against marijuana use. A slew of Ad Hominem arguments against Wilkinson, coupled with a story about a student of yours who made bad decisions, does not count. Your article was very poorly constructed and contributed nothing to this debate.

2. i was introduced last summer and i vowed too myself that i will smoke marijuana and will not be smoked by marijuana.

3. i strongly oppose legalism and condone morality.

4. you can abuse almost anything in life.

5. aside from the occasional recreational use of the drug i use it for my insomnia.

6. it has been used for thousands of years and suddenly in this small time period of about one hundred years we have decided to make it illegal.

7. it was used instead of alcohol by the french army under napoleon as a pain killer and recieved high acclomation by the soldiers that used it.

8. our economy could use it as a means to get on it's feet again if it were to become legal. creation of jobs.

9. our founding fathers grew it and now we have become the legalists that we struggled and sacraficed to overthrow.

10. do you know the history behind the illegalization of marijuana? well i will educate you if you hadn't already known. marijuana was made illegal as a tool to rid of mexicans living in the u.s. as marijuana was a major part of a mexcan laborers lifestyle.

11. knowledge is power, and you can never have enough. i am still learning and if you decide to argue with me i will respond as best i can.

To say beer doesn't lead to other drugs is ridiculous cause when your drunk and intoxicated, forget about it people will try things like coke. The only reason weed is a gateway drug is because the government banned it from now unproven scientific papers that placed it in the same category of street dealers that sell cocaine, heroin, etc. If it was regulated by states and federal government then there is no "gateway", just another reason why prohibition does not work at all. At all.

You guys are BOZOS, your making it seem like pot is destroying the world, you know what really is? Ignorant people like you that just judge and criticize. If you don't smoke pot and don't like it well then how about you shut up and keep it to yourself. I have been smoking since high school and now I'm almost done with my college and own a really good business. I've never had the desire to throw away my life to anything harder and live a amazing peaceful life. You guys just argue from such broad points of view maybe thats why kids these days run away to drugs for the lack of communication

What is worse than drugs to your child to to turn a blind eye and a wall of ignorance and refusal to investigate. Your blind eye attitude will enable exactly what you fear. You need to do real fact based research, stop spreading opinion as fact and pay more attention to your children.